The day JFK belatedly set the Civil Rights Act in motion

The events of 55 years ago today, as recounted in The New Yorker:

Even the President’s speech, vital and often eloquent though it was, sometimes seemed detached from the crisis. That “we are confronted primarily with a moral issue” is precisely what some Negroes have been urging Mr. Kennedy to say ever since his inauguration, and what, from the time of t…